Chuck and Anne McMinn – Owners

Chuck has a BSEE from Brown University, an MSEE from Syracuse University and an MBA from Harvard University. He is a startup junkie, with over twenty five years of experience in creating, financing, working in and advising startup high technology companies. Chuck is currently the part time chairman of Covad Communications, which he co-founded in 1996 to provide broadband data services to homesand businesses using DSL technology. Chuck’s wine interests date back to his arrival in California in 1978 from New Jersey. His approach to wine at Vineyard 29 is to combine time tested traditional techniques for winemaking with the best facilities and equipment to produce the best wine possible. Drawing from his early semiconductor processing days, he has a keen interest in measuring every aspect of Vineyard 29’s operations. This puts into practice a philosophy that he learned while working at Intel – “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

After graduating from Mount Holyoke College, Anne taught junior high students with learning disabilities for a few years before launching into her career as full-time mom and volunteer. Over the years she has had a variety of volunteer commitments, many of them in the classroom, including eight years as an Art Docent in the Los Altos elementary schools. Anne’s interest in gardening led her to complete a course of study in horticultural therapy (the use of gardening for therapeutic purposes). Over the last ten years she has developed horticultural therapy programs at the MACSA Adult Day Health Care Center in San Jose, and at Adult Day Services of Napa Valley where she now coordinates a group of volunteers who work with clients in the patio garden.

Chuck and Anne live in Saint Helena full time. Their travels often take them to the East Coast to visit family and friends. Falls Church, VA is one destination, where their son, Brad, and his wife, Melanie, live – along with their granddaughter, Ashlyn Elyse. Ukraine is also a travel destination, as that is where their other son, Dan, and his wife, Lesya, are living and working.